My guide pointed to the constellation of Perseus, and I could
discern a nebulous mass of considerable diameter from which proceeded a
wisp-like exhalation, just a phantasmal fan of phosphorescence, behind
it.
"The glory of the City fell around us now; we were in its broad streets
beneath the towering pillars of light that framed them in a fence of
splendor. On we pressed, but I glanced from side to side, noting the
great glass houses and buildings, here colonnades of translucent
opalescent beauty, made up of hollow tubes of glass holding an interior
illumination, and clambered over by vines whose expanding leaves formed
a tracery of silhouettes upon their sides.
"Still on, past porticos and under arches, through open forum-like
squares, from which were elevated the great glass globes I have
described, which hung lamp-like in the sky,--past palaces and arcades,
blocks of low stores in iridescent tints, and long, straight fronts of
white opaque buildings, through occasional tunnels into which we
plunged as into a sea of radiance, and on, out, past a few squares of
black umbrageous trees that seemed like dead coals laid on the heat
quivering hearth of a furnace, past minarets of curling, entwined
filagrees of glass threads, past dull or darker areas where the huge
glass factories were built, their forges glowing like Cyclops' eyes in
the night, and from which was produced the colossal sum of manufacture,
which this great City embodied.
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